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DENISE DUHAMEL

Poem in which I Escape from a Claw Machine

So many years I was waiting to be picked—

a plushie like all the others. Sometimes 

the metal prongs were so close I felt myself levitate.

Other times I was buried under piles of my kind.

Each kid’s face on the other side of the glass 

mirrored my expectant feelings, then disappointment,

as an adult arm pulled the kid away and said “enough.”

A few times I came so close, was lifted several inches,

before the claw released me. I never stopped to think

how much I was like a cat in the talons of a hawk

being dropped back to its yard. I was excited

when I finally got out, the world so much bigger

than the arcade. I sat in the backseat of a car

and stared at the sky. But soon I was placed 

on that kid’s twin comforter and forgotten. 

I glanced over at a throw pillow, cold and alone.

 

​​Denise Duhamel’s most recent books of poetry are Pink Lady (Pitt Poetry Series, 2025), Second Story (2021) and Scald (2017). Blowout (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In Which (2024) is a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize. She also served as a guest editor for The Best American Poetry 2013. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, she is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami.

 

En•Trance Summer 2025

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